The god Of Abuse

“Gentle Christians” mothers is an online support group for Christian women to be gentler moms. Moms sometimes need to be encouraged to raise their children in the Lord. You decide you want to be a better mom. You come across a website that claims to be Christian. You look on their website and see this on their about page:

1) To encourage mothers to minister to their children heartily, as unto the Lord.
2) To help mothers learn to parent more gently.
3) To offer mothers information so they can make informed choices.
4) To strengthen and build mothers’ confidence in their choices and in their ability to parent their children as God guides them.
5) To encourage mothers to love their children, their husbands, and, above all, to love our Lord God.

Can’t argue with any of them except I might add as God guides them through His word to number 4. All great goals! You think, “Great! I am going to sign up!” Unfortunately, this is not what happens much of the time on GCM. The above listed goals are very misleading. In reality they should read:

1) To encourage moms to spend more and more time on GCM.
2) To help mothers learn to parent without the help of the fathers.
3) To offer mothers information so they can parent “our” way.
4) To strengthen mothers to be in total control of all child-rearing decisions.
5) To encourage mothers to love a false god and leave their husbands and put their children on antidepressants and other brain drugs (I have heard this from a few people now plus all of my sister’s children have been put on different drugs over the past two or so years).

It has been nice to see some deactivations stating that they need to spend more time with their families. Yeah! Also, the owner of the site did say they were going to get back to the goals of GCM. It is concerning how far removed they became in the first place and will change really happen? I can’t answer those questions. This site may have started with good intentions and it had such potential to be a place of encouragement, but knowing what happened to my sister and others, I know this is an unsafe place to be. I am not very hopeful that there will be any lasting change. There are too many people still on GCM that follow the latter goals.

So if you are new to “Gentle Christian” Mothers, you might expect them to talk a lot about God and His word. You might not know that evil takes place deep within. The ungodly spouting off their ungodly doctrines. You may go for a year or two thinking all is peachy-keen, but that is because you aren’t part of the privileged class. They worship a different god. She is the god of abuse. And she has different rules to play by and if you go off script, well you will most likely be labeled toxic or unsafe.

How can this be? It starts by getting woman to believe that anyone who is supportive of spanking is an abuser. Once they believe that, then the separation from family can begin. They talk down to their husbands because what do they know about parenting? Nothing in their opinion. They are the ones who spend all day on the computer talking to “experts” so they know it all. If the husband doesn’t comply with all of their “rules” for parenting, then the breakdown of the marriage results. From there it just gets nastier and nastier.

Here are some of the rules of the abuse god you should know about if you are going to join GCM.

1) If you, a GCMer, claims abuse, then everything the said abuser does is abuse. Nothing nice can be said about the alleged abuser nor can anyone tell you that something he is doing is rational because to do so would be to take his side, to do so would not be supporting you, the GCMer, 100%. To do so would be crossing a boundary. Anyone who crosses a boundary needs to be immediately cast out of your life forever.

2) Anyone who disagrees with you does not worship the one true abuse god and has crossed a boundary, have nothing to do with them.

3) Slander the accused at any chance you get. Tell everyone. If someone cautions you on how you are speaking about the abuser, cut them out of your life. They obviously don’t understand the healing process.

4) Never read the Bible. If you do, only read the parts about grace and forgiveness and then apply it only to yourself.

5) Tell everyone how terrible your parents are. They deserve to be treated without any consideration unless they are okay with your new cult-like personality and slandering your husband.

6) Hate everyone who even says the slightest thing you might take as an insult. Hope they die and go to hell. After all they crossed a boundary.

7) Commit adultery/fornication. How else will you heal?
Also body mutilation is a good thing.

8) Try to take all your husband’s money and if he doesn’t give it all to you, tell everyone he is financially abusing you. He is obviously crossing a financial boundary if he wants any money.

9) Tell lies if you have to if will advance your agenda.

10) Never answer questions. You owe it to no one. There are no reasonable questions. They are obviously asking you questions to keep you under their control. Don’t let anyone cross this boundary.

Take heed of Paul’s words to Timothy:

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. 2 Timothy 3:1-5

If you are thinking of joining GCM, remember the words of Paul and have nothing to do with people like this!

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? (2 Cor 6:14-15, ESV)

6 responses to “The god Of Abuse”

I was a member of GCM for about eight years. I left about four years ago because administration had gotten control-hungry to the point where they were attempting to censor what I could say on other platforms like FB. I also saw exactly what you describe here with regard to encouraging women to leave their husbands. One member, in particular, went through a divorce and then began proclaiming herself an expert in recognizing abuse, setting up boundaries (and any form of shutting people out was referred to as a boundary). She saw her own situation in every woman — because she felt her situation was abusive, she saw abuse in every other woman’s marital problems. And because she was one of the “inner circle,” there was no way of calling her out on this.

There was a lot of cult-like behavior, and a lot of encouragement for women to spend more time on GCM than with their families, such as rewards for accumulating inordinate numbers of posts — members with lots of posts got a special icon next to their name, members with lots of posts could use colored fonts, members with lots of posts got access to additional “private” forums . . . and if you think the forum for people with 500+ posts is exclusive, did you know there was one for people with 2,500 posts? (I believe that was the count. It was several years ago that I was there, but I believe the post requirement for that forum was 2,500 posts and 2+ years of being a GCM member. It was called “The Garden,” and I was a member there until I got booted out because of something I said on Facebook.

I will say this, with regard to a previous post wherein you refer to the “solo parenting within marriage” forum as a forum for people who are parenting their kids themselves because their husbands don’t accept their parenting: the poster who corrected you about it was right — the original intent of that forum was to offer support to women who were parenting their kids while their husbands were away, either due to frequent business trips, deployment, etc. The reason I know is because I was the reason the forum was created. I had originally suggested that GCM have a forum for “solo parents,” wherein women who were parenting alone for ANY reason could address our unique issues (i.e. I was tired of people responded to my questions with solutions that required that my husband be there. “Get some rest while your husband bathes the kids.” “If one child needs extra attention, have your husband take care of the other kids while you give that child the extra attention she needs.” and so forth). My original intent was that the forum be for women who were parenting alone either because of frequent travel (which is my case; my hubby’s business requires that he be out of town nearly every weekday and is only home on weekends) or deployment, or divorce, widowhood . . . basically any reason. So the “solo parenting” forum was created. A few months later, the site owner contacted me to let me know that I was no longer welcome in that forum. It seems some of the divorced women felt that the forum should be only for divorced women, and that people who had husbands who did come home at some time or another didn’t understand their unique needs, so I would no longer have access to the forum I requested. When I objected and reminded her that I was the person who suggested the forum in the first place, the “solo parenting within marriage” forum was created. During the time I was there, it was never very active, but it was, indeed, created for women who were married but had absent husbands.

I don’t know what the latest hoo-ha is going on over there right now, though I know people are leaving and that they are complaining about administration. I can say with certainty that, while I was there, my PM’s were read by administration. I say this because I was told about it AFTER THE FACT by the site owner herself. They were apparently on a manhunt concerning a member who was advocating a different parenting style, and were concerned that she had been advocating for this parenting style via the GCM PM system. So they read all the PM’s she sent, including ones she sent to me. I give credit to the site owner for telling me about it; she could have just never mentioned it and I might never have known — but I think the more respectable thing to do would have been to ASK me first, rather than read my PM’s and THEN tell me about it. (And yes, what they read in her PM’s to me got her banned from the site.)

There is a lot of cult-like behavior, and a lot of cloak-and-dagger going on within the “inner circle” at GCM. Disconcerting things happen, and when people question what is going on, they are told that they don’t need to know the details, that they can’t be told the details because of “privacy concerns,” but that they should just trust the administration to do what is right and take care of them. Once I left there, it took several months for me to get to a place where I was no longer relying on GCM’er for advice in nearly every aspect of my life. It was literally like I had to let the brainwashing wear off. During my second child’s toddlerhood I spent nearly all my time on GCM, and a greatly regret the time I spent there that I should have spent with my daughter. Although I know the original intent of the site was to offer support and encouragement for moms to better their parenting, the site has morphed into something different entirely, and, unfortunately, at this point,I really do think that if the site were to shut down permanently, it would actually be a GOOD thing for a lot of women.

Thank you so much for responding. I hear from so many formers through e-mail only. It is so nice when one comments publicly. Thank you!

“Disconcerting things happen, and when people question what is going on, they are told that they don’t need to know the details, that they can’t be told the details because of “privacy concerns,” but that they should just trust the administration to do what is right and take care of them.”

You know, I was never a member of GCM and yet I too have experienced the “privacy concerns” answer!!!!

With all the detail you provided, I hope you won’t have any backlash from any GCMers! I imagine you have no contact with any of them anymore since you have been so bold in your comment!

I have a few questions I would like to ask you privately. If would like please e-mail me at exposegcm@yahoo.com, I would greatly appreciate it!

Sure, I will be happy to contact you via email. No, I am not worried about backlash from GCMers. I have not been a member of that site for years, and, contrary to what they might think, they don’t actually get to control what I say in other formats. 😉

People, (Ladies I think) I second exposes’ appreciation of diverse confirming posts, by people speaking from GCM experience. As expose is aware, I am a husband who is in a struggle with “Hagar’s Sisters”, a church supported domestic abuse ministry in the Boston area that appears quite similar to GCM, as much as I can see of them. Though my wife and I still live in the same house, my wife behaves a lot like exposes’ sister, the Lundy Bancroft parts in particular. My struggle with the Bancroft deceived Christians of Hagar’s Sisters still continues as I had shared with expose. I feel that God was Honored recently in this struggle even as He walks me through it. The “Hagar’s Sisters” web site changed their “Am I Abused” page and deleted their glowing endorsement of Lundy Bancroft and his book, the image of the book and the direct link to buy the book on Amazon. This happened after the woman “president” of Hagar’s Sisters had lost in the Court hearing regarding the false charges she had filed against me. The Judge Vacated her own previous endorsement of the harassment prevention order filed against me.
While expose noticed that the book was still on a list in the Hagar’s Sisters resource page, I was overjoyed that the prominent dark endorsement of the book was taken off the page by other Hands than mine! The woman who runs Hagar’s Sounds much like the “abuse is everywhere” GCM woman “former” describes.
Though “former” related there was no apparent way to “call the woman out”, at least on GCM. My experience says, at least to me, that if I walk where my read of The Word leads me, even through dark places I would never choose to walk myself, bits of darkness are being exposed, not by my power, but possibly in association with what personal obedience I can offer to God because He first Loved me, and my wife, and my children, and expose and my friends and our lost fellow people in GCM and Hagar’s Sisters, and the lost sheep every where.
God, thanks for your Love, Your Faithfulness, Your Word and your people who speak it faithfully! Help us not to waver in faithfulness to Your Truth. Help us to be humble, forgiving and Loving like You are.

I’m not a former GCM, but have one in my life who also worships the god of abuse. It’s very frustrating to listen to her proclaim all the ways in which other people are “abusive” to her (mainly my husband and I) and pass out computer chair diagnoses for various mental disorders for other people despite having no credentials to make this acceptable, while simultaneously being the only one in our “relationship” who frequently name calls, lies, uses, talks badly about, attempts to control, etc. She contradicts herself on a regular basis, but her GCM/former GCM echo chamber don’t seem to notice and not only condone all of her poor behaviors but encourage.

Everything is justifiable if you’re dealing with a so-called abuser, though. You can treat him/her as badly and it’s accepted in the name of “boundaries” or sometimes just because they deserve it. In addition, who’s going to call out, contradict or otherwise question an “abuse victim”? No one – unless you want to be branded as abusive too. It’s a very attractive narrative and role to play if you’re someone who believes she is never wrong or believes she is entitled to treat people badly if they don’t give her everything she wants when she wants it.

The sickening thing in our case (and probably others) is that this warped version of reality is touted to her children, also. She willfully uses it to drive an unnecessary wedge between those children and their father and that is so reprehensible to me that I can barely put it into words.

Anyway… I just wanted to let you know how validating it was to see this and the comments under it.